In Good Hands
by Bartlebead
Summary: Dean and Sam are removed from their hunt for an other-cultural monster and taken hostage by that culture's most worshiped being.


Title: In Good Hands

Author: Bartlebead a.k.a. rince1wind

Rating: T for language

Warnings: Language; well, Dean, you know.

Word Count: 2775

_AN: This was for the 2011 LJ Summergen fic exchange; the recipient was Keerawa. Betas - notethesarcasm and sinead - thank you._

**In Good Hands**

Dean spun around, trying to get his bearings. Sam froze, his eyes darting everywhere. The two of them sought each other's glance, each making sure the other was experiencing the same thing: The Three Happiness storefront on Cermak, the main drag of Chinatown, had been replaced with the palm of an enormous hand and the hungry ghost they'd been chasing was nowhere to be seen.

Wherever he turned, Dean found himself blocked either by the huge mound leading to an invisible wrist or fingers sticking up like twenty-foot-tall tree trunks. Finally he came back to Sam, breathing hard and clutching a stitch in his gut, gun loose in his other hand by his side.

"What the fuck, man?" he breathed. "What the hell is this?"

Sam shook his head. "No idea." He stayed tensed and ready, but nothing attacked.

Really, nothing could be hiding anywhere: the surface they stood on was completely uncluttered with vegetation.

"You think this could be a real hand?" Incredulous, Dean crouched, not wanting to put a knee down in case he needed to jump up quickly. He touched the surface gingerly with his fingertips, and when nothing happened, he put his whole hand flat onto it. It was warm and smooth and when he pressed down, it gave readily.

"Yeah. It's a real hand." He stood. "It's freakin' huge, but it's a real hand. It's just–" He glanced around again. "It's just sort of ielevated/i, doin' nothing."

He looked up and saw – absence. Literally. Above their heads was inothing/i, just an unending sort of light gray opacity that, as far as he could see, filled space that should have been filled with sky and buildings and the "El" bridge. There was no sun, no clouds, no people. Just nothing.

He turned to Sam, who seemed to have come to a decision and said. "It doesn't seem… um… hostile," he said. "I don't know what's going on here, but it's not actually doing anything to us."

Sam tucked his gun into the back of his pants and stood at ease. After a moment he took out his cell phone. "What do you think the chances are of being able to get hold of Bobby?" he asked.

"Pretty crappy, really."

Sam looked at the instrument. "Dead," he said disgustedly. "Of course it is."

"Shit," Dean said, but he put his gun away too. He wasn't happy about the dead cell phone. In fact, he was really annoyed.

He growled, "A minute ago we're in Chinatown, chasing down a murdering hungry ghost, and suddenly…wham, here we are?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know… Something about this is familiar, though, like I should know what's happening. "

"That's called 'déjà vu,' college boy," said Dean.

"Nah, not like that," Sam said. "But I know I've read about something like this…"

"Some kind of lore? Something foreign, maybe?" Dean asked. "C'mon, Sammy!"

"Something I read about at Stanford?" Sam closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. "I dunno, Dean. I can't access it."

"Great!" Dean said, throwing his hands up in the air. "Let me know when you do, if you wouldn't mind?"

Sam snorted. "Sarcasm isn't gonna help, Dean."

"Yeah, right. How 'bout we take a walk then? Can't stand here doin' nothing."

They started to walk toward the huge fingers sticking up at one end of the oblong palm, a distance that seemed about maybe forty feet. The surface of the hand was level enough to walk on easily, though the springiness was strange.

"Well, we're almost to the fingers, Sam. I suppose we could try to climb over 'em and see what's on the other side."

"How? They're completely smooth. There are no handholds or jagged edges to step on."

"We got some equipment."

Sam glanced at him. "You're not thinking of climbing up those fingers using your knife, are you?"

"Well, dude, you said it! There aren't any handholds! What else are we gonna do?"

His brother looked at him in disbelief. "Think of the blood, man! That's disgusting. And we don't even know if the hand actually belongs to whatever put us here." He shook his head. "How 'bout we leave that for if nothing else works?"

The twenty-foot fingers now stood right before them. Sam put out a hand to touch the one in front of him, and immediately it and the others began to extend upwards. Dean and Sam jumped back and watched the fingers grew quickly to twice their previous size.

"Jeez, Sammy– look at that!" As the fingers grew, they also began to move, receding swiftly away from the Winchesters. They both whipped around to see the distance they'd just covered extending away in the other direction.

Sam shouted, "The hand, Dean! It's growing!" Dean stepped back to keep his balance as the surface of the hand began to shake as the palm on which they stood both grew and moved away from them.

"Holy shit!" cried Dean. "Hang on, Sammy!" He grabbed his brother's shoulder as the shaking got worse. Sam clutched him back.

It was a massive earthquake now, though no boulders flew and no earth cracked beneath their feet. The intensity of the vibrations threw Sam and Dean from their feet and bounced them around like rubber balls. Sam was ripped from Dean's grasp; Sam was unable to hold on either and went hurtling off.

"You all–ow–right, Dean?" Sam's voice came in a shout from some ten feet away.

"Ouch! Damn, that was my–yeah, I'm okay! Fu–ouch! Try to stay down!" Dean yelled back.

Finally, the quake stopped. Dean picked himself up uncertainly. "Sam! You okay?" He looked for his brother. "Hey, Sammy. Yo! Over here."

Staggering over himself, he said, "My balance is shot, man, but I think that's it."

He leaned down to give Sam a hand, and when Sam was vertical, they both stood gazing around them.

The tree-trunk fingers had grown into mountains, in a distance that hadn't existed moments before. Behind them, the mount of Venus had become an imposing mesa far away. Huge, unclimbable ridges rose on both sides of where they stood. Nothing moved now but them.

"It seems pretty clear we're the only living things here," Sam said. "Other than whatever this hand belongs to, I mean. So, no predators our size are going to attack out of the blue. And this isn't trying to harm us. So – that's a good thing."

Dean raised an eyebrow at him.

"It isn't a good thing?" asked Sam.

"Sam." Dean threw his hands up in the air. "This is a new one. I'm gonna sit down and take a load off and I'm gonna take this as it comes."

Sam lowered himself down as well. "All right. I suppose it makes as good sense as anything else."

They waited, alert, but nothing happened. An hour passed; another.

"Dude. I'm taking a nap," Dean said finally. "Wake me up if something happens."

"Sure. Something's got to happen pretty soon, doesn't it?" Sam asked, a little plaintively.

Dean shrugged.

He woke up later to find Sam still sitting.

"How long was I asleep?" he asked.

"About an hour."

"And absolutely inothing/i happened?" he asked in disbelief.

"That's right. Absolutely nothing."

"Well, you want to catch forty winks?"

"Nah. I'm good. I mean, I'm bored. But I'm good."

"Right."

They sat. And sat.

Dean finally stood up and began to pace.

Sam said, "Dude, will you sit down? You're driving me crazy."

Rounding on him, Dean said angrily, "No, Sam, I will not sit down. Sitting down like that is driving ime/i crazy. I mean it! Damn it, there's nothin' for me here to even pound a fist on. And that pisses me off!"

Sam jumped up and shouted back at his brother. "I don't like it either! But there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it, does there?"

"No, there doesn't!"

"So why don't you just– chill out, man? For Chrissakes, Dean–"

"What, Sam? 'Chill out' and what?" Dean was shaking, he was so furious. "Sit around hoping that ione day/i we can somehow get back to where we belong and catch that ghost? Before it kills twenty other people?"

Sam got his "I'm calm and you're calm and we're all gonna be calm together" face on and said, "I know. This sucks. But–isn't it kind of nice that nothing awful is happening for just a little while? Maybe–maybe we're even in some different kind of time, and nothing's happening to anyone!"

"No, Sam, it's freakin' inot/i nice. And I don't for a iminute/i think nothing's happening to anyone back–back–back… whatever…on earth? Back from wherever the fuck we are," he snarled. "Something's ialways/i happening to someone! And something's igot/i to happen here!" He crossed his arms, however, stared at the ground and stilled.

Sam put out his hands, "Good. Let's try again to figure it out. And," he pointed out, "we can do that because nothing's trying to kill us. Sit down."

Dean frowned, but he sat. Sam followed suit.

Sam went on. "You think maybe the hungry ghost was the ghost of a witch? Powerful enough to pull off a curse on the living?"

"No, man. Dead's dead as far as curses go. With a witch, anyway. No life, no curse."

"Are you sure that's true with a Chinese one? They've got a different…um…set of legends and mythoi from ours."

"Myth-a-what?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, all right. Anyway, I'm about 99.99 percent sure, Sam. It's, like, a supernatural law. That doesn't mean we didn't piss off someone else while we been chasing this one around. Or that this isn't a curse."

"Angels?"

Dean made a face. "This isn't Heaven, and it sure isn't the Hell either one of us has been to. Which, yeah, probably makes it better, but we don't have anything to go on at all to find out more."

"These ghosts suck or eat the life out of people. This one was into killing young married women."

"And?"

"And nothing, man, I don't see how that and this could be connected."

Dean nodded once. "I'm not hungry though. And we've been here a long time."

"Chinese gods, maybe?"

"As much as it hurts me to say it, I guess we'll just have to be patient and wait," said Dean.

Before Sam could respond to the unlikely comment, a voice that came from all around them rang out. The air vibrated around them with its power.

"**You have each made a thoughtful reply. That is probably the best that will come from you two****."**

They jumped to their feet.

"What the hell–?" Sam whispered.

"Dunno, Sammy! It's gotta be one big-ass motherfucker, though–"

"YOUR LANGUAGE, ESPECIALLY, DEAN WINCHESTER, COULD USE IMPROVEMENT. IT IS VERY CRASS. YOUR MANNERS ARE TERRIBLE." Ha!

"Uh… sorry?" Dean said, with a swallow.

"YOU ARE BOTH QUITE ANGRY YOUNG MEN. YOUR JUDGEMENT IS OFTEN POOR. ESPECIALLY YOURS, SAMUEL WINCHESTER."

Sam stuttered, "I know. I'm…um…trying?"

"MOST IMPORTANTLY, YOU TWO ARE BROTHERS. RESPECT IS REQUIRED BETWEEN YOU. YOU, SAMUEL, FOR DEAN: HIS JUDGEMENT HAS BEEN PROVEN."

"Wow! Thanks, I think," said Dean. He and Sam stood back to back. Dean leaned back, turning his head slightly towards Sam. "What is this? You got any idea yet? How does whatever the hell it is know us well enough to be our Miss Manners?"

YOU, ELDER SON, SHOULD RESPECT YOUR BROTHER'S PATIENCE.

"It knows us all right," said Sam.

MOST IMPORTANT, HOWEVER, IS THIS: YOU MUST LEARN TO RESPECT AND HONOR YOURSELVES. THE GOAL OF BODHISATTVAHOOD IS A GOOD ONE AND YOU WILL NOT REACH IT WITHOUT LOVE FOR YOURSELVES AS WELL AS FOR EACH OTHER.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" shouted Dean.

Sam put a hand on Dean's arm. "Forget it Dean. I think..."

YES, YOUNGER SON. WELL DONE. YOU TWO SHOULD QUESTION AND LEARN AS YOU HELP OTHERS. YOU SHOULD BE MINDFUL OF WHAT YOU DO.

"I think we're okay, here, Dean. We've come to the attention of something, but we haven't pissed it off."

"What then?" Dean said with exasperation. "What is it?"

"Not an it, but not really a 'he' either. And not one of ours. Gods, I mean. And maybe not even a god."

"Enough with the riddles. Please."

"I think it's the Buddha."

i"The Buddha?"/i

"Yeah. We must have caught His attention somehow."

Dean thought for a minute. "He's like God or something, isn't he? He's Chinese? Like our ghost?"

"Indian and Chinese. And Japanese and Tibetan. I don't know if each culture has produced a Buddha of its own, or what," Sam said. "The original story is that he was a man who, centuries ago in India, was good enough to transcend the wheel of reincarnation."

"Reincarnation exists?" Dean asked, eyebrows raised.

"How would I know, dude? It looks like it. Maybe. The Buddha does. Maybe it only exists for Buddhists?"

Dean asked quietly, "So what kind of shit are we in? How do we get away from here in one piece?"

"If He's what I think He is, He doesn't mean us–or anyone–harm."

"You believe that?"

Sam considered. "Yes."

"All right. That's good enough for me, bro. I think this guy might be onto somethin'."

Sam smiled at Dean. "Me, too."

"THE HUNGRY GHOST YOU HAVE PURSUED IS NOT AN EVIL IN ITSELF. IT IS STUCK, TRAPPED BY ITS DESIRES AND ITS SUFFERING. IT WANTS LIFE. THE PERSON IT WAS, ITS ESSENCE, MUST BE RELEASED TO REJOIN THE WHEEL OF KARMA AND RETURN TO LIFE IN THE PROPER WAY."

"That's what we were doing!" said Dean.

Sam frowned. "Maybe something was wrong with how we were doing it."

"IT IS A MATTER OF COMPASSION."

Dean looked at Sam, who nodded. He said, "All right. We'll try to figure it out. But we ihave/i to get back."

"**GO!" **

The shaking began again. Dean and Sam grabbed onto one another and held on. Again they were thrown to the ground and hurled about like toys, while this time the mountains dwindled and sped back toward them. The impassable ridges to the sides melted down and what passed for sky darkened and closed in.

To Dean it felt like hours before the quake subsided and abruptly halted, leaving him and Sam in silent, inky darkness. Both of them lay still, gathering their wits. Then something changed, something indefinable, and now Dean could feel that the ground beneath him was truly ground: rubble and gravel dug into him uncomfortably. The darkness had changed as well.

As they picked themselves up and dusted themselves off, Dean said, "What time is it? Do we know?"

Sam took out his cell phone. "Yeah. It's working again. It's 4:22 a.m., about half an hour after we left."

Dean whistled. "Felt more like eighteen."

It began to rain, even as the moon emerged from behind a cloud. They were near the library in Chinatown, right where they'd been eighteen hours–or a half-hour–before. A quick movement nearby made both men look to the right. An elderly man, about 5 foot 5, stood not far away from them, wearing a plain robe that fell to the tops of his bare feet. His features were Asian – Chinese, probably – and he looked completely human.

Lightning flared. An enormous clap of thunder exploded in the dark street near them. The acrid smell of ozone came up from the point of contact, a manhole cover about feet away. Both Winchesters ducked involuntarily. The elderly Chinese did not.

The man stepped toward them, ignoring the vulnerability of his feet and the bullet-like raindrops that hurtled from the sky. When he came up to Sam and Dean, he reached up with both hands and put one on the shoulder of each. He looked up at them and whispered, "It is about compassion."

He disappeared suddenly and without fanfare; no lightning or thunder bid him farewell. Sam and Dean were left unbalanced for a moment.

They stared at one another and shouted, "The sewers!" and ran to the manhole, lifted it together and began the climb down. All of their earlier clues fit together. The sewer below was where the body had been dumped, fifty years prior to the Winchesters' arrival in Chicago.

When they reached the bottom of the ladder, where the sewer tunnels began, Sam looked at Dean and said, "The poor guy didn't ask to be murdered."

"Nah. He didn't," Dean said.

"We'll remember that."

"Yep."

They chose a direction and sloshed forward.


End file.
